If This Is Your First Time, Take My Hand

As Conway Twitty once sang, I can tell you’ve never been this far (on my blog) before.  There have been many new visitors to this blog in the last few days, and I want you to know it’s okay to be nervous.  To make you more comfortable, I will tell you a bit more about this site and myself.  First, I’ve had quite a few jobs before I started blogging.  I am a man of many talents, and have often been hired to teach others new skills.  I have given ski lessons to Sonny Bono, flight lessons to John Denver, locution lessons to George W. Bush, driving lessons to Ted Kennedy, and taught Hunter Thompson how to aim a gun.  I have also been involved in some things I’m not proud about: I gave Barack Obama his first line of oratory, Jerry Nadler his first doughnut, Barney Frank his first lollipop, and introduced Lindsay Lohan to some dude who is a deejay.  I was once a nude centerfold for The Nation, but I was young and needed the money.  That Katrina Vanden Heuvel is very persuasive.  I hope that let’s you know a bit more about me and my blog.  Please no jokes about this post being shorter or quicker than you expected.  Please check in to the website as often Britney Spears checks into rehab.

But enough about me.  For the history of the website, click here.

The King Of Canadian Comedy

Television Review: Corner Gas

One of the funniest television shows around was created by the king of Canadian comedy. Okay, done laughing? I know, I didn’t even know that Canada had a sense of humor until I saw Rick Moranis in Strange Brew, and that didn’t get funny until my fifth beer. Each night, on WGN America, Canadian comedian Brent Butt stars in Corner Gas, a show about how his life would have turned out had he not left his very small Canadian home town for the bright lights and big city living of Saskatchewan. (Or Ottawa or Newfoundland or whatever; I’m American so I don’t know much about Canada.) Butt’s Corner Gas (snicker) manages to be both simple and clever, original and familiar. It avoids shocking and offensive humor, instead finding laughs in a PG but still lighthearted adult manner. The show is produced in a traditional, but nowadays rarely used (at least successfully), style, but still manages the occasional postmodern turn, such as an absurd cutaway or odd pop culture reference. I would say Corner Gas is old school television: it attempts thirty minutes of witty, easy laughs, and actually delivers.  Now, maybe Canada will be known for more than hockey and . . . uh … their bacon … and, uh ….

Op-ed Copout

Drudge headlined the breaking story this afternoon that the NYT editorial page editor David Shipley turned down an op-ed submitted by Sen. McCain.  The article was written in response to an op-ed published in the NYT by Sen. Obama on his shifting Iraq position.  Shipley, a former Clinton White House employee, claimed the article wasn’t what they were looking for.  This is understandable.  The McCain op-ed merely expressed the views of a man who may be the next president on one of the most important issues facing the country.  Besides, publishing the op-ed would have squeezed the space available for the latest column from Bob Herbert or Maureen Dowd.

Time Off

Reading the latest issue of Time magazine, it became obvious how Sen. McCain can gain not just more media coverage, but positive press attention.  As this article illustrates, he and his staff only have to return negative (and often off the record) criticism of President Bush.

Holy Brit!

The Washington Post is reporting that Fox News Washington Managing Editor Brit Hume is retiring, or at least semi-retiring. He will be stepping down from “Special Report,” but is “near a deal to continue with Fox in a senior-statesman role, not unlike that of NBC‘s Tom Brokaw, for roughly 100 days a year. Hume would be a senior political analyst, anchor for special events,
panelist on “Fox News Sunday” and occasional substitute for the host, Chris Wallace.” Media analyst Howard Kurtz, a CNN host when he isn’t writing for the WaPo, gets in a dig at Hume, who he says was “a former ABC White House correspondent who has never hidden his conservative views . . .” Yes, Hume is famously conservative, but probably only famously because that is so rare among the media. Hume was actually also famously known for being the fairest of D.C. reporters, even in the Clinton White House. “Special Report” is one of the best, if not the best, news and analysis programs on television, with most of that credit going to Hume himself. Fox News will have a difficult time replacing him.